Our FAA tower has been evacuated at least two times today, high winds have stopped nearly all traffic for the entire afternoon. So far in my work area we've only pushed out one flight to BOS and a ferry to JFK. OH was on a systemwide groundstop at one point.
For now the winds have calmed down and alot of mainline flights have landed. All outbound international flights this evening have been canceled.
The Delta hangar situated near 18L has suffered damage to the roof. A large section has been peeled off on the left side of the building ( facing north ). Insulation was seen blowing from the top of concourse A earlier and a light pole with four lights affixed originally now only has three lights. I have a few pics and some videos I'll try to post later.

Quoting CVG2LGA (Thread starter):Our FAA tower has been evacuated at least two times today, high winds have stopped nearly all traffic for the entire afternoon. So far in my work area we've only pushed out one flight to BOS and a ferry to JFK. OH was on a systemwide groundstop at one point.
For now the winds have calmed down and alot of mainline flights have landed. All outbound international flights this evening have been canceled.
The Delta hangar situated near 18L has suffered damage to the roof. A large section has been peeled off on the left side of the building ( facing north ). Insulation was seen blowing from the top of concourse A earlier and a light pole with four lights affixed originally now only has three lights. I have a few pics and some videos I'll try to post later.

Ahh that's the remnants of Ike for ya! Just had them come through MKE area not too long ago.

The situation is pretty grim right up I-71 in Columbus. Currently Port Columbus is on backup generators as half the metro is without power. We've been on a local ground stop for several hours and most en-route aircraft have diverted to Cleveland, Pittsburgh, or Chicago. Wind gusts earlier this afternoon were called at 67kts and we had several aircraft attempt to land only to go around. The departure boards are increasingly showing "cancelled" and people on diverted flights are being bussed into Columbus. Most of the state is under a high wind warning until 7PM this evening.

Our dispatch mentioned that besides CVG, CMH and SDF were real bad trouble sports today. Supposedly CMH had the runways not aligned right with the winds and SDF was closed until 4pm, winds ups to 75mph. 300,000 people in the Louisville area without power and according to the local power company, do not expect full power recovery any time soon. Supposed to go down to Houston from Louisville in the morning; will be interesting going from one trouble spot to the next one.

Yea it was crazy today. FAA tower ended up evacuating about 4 times total if I remember correctly. A part of our operations tower had a pig piece of roof blow off and land on the roof of the main part of the concourse. A bag cart was flipped over by the wind and hit one of our aircraft. Over on the DHL pad by RNWY 36R, where all the Freedom planes are parked, a tug rolled into one of the Freedom birds. There was a couple of planes sitting at our gates at C that had been partially spun around by the wind...even as they were triple choked. Had some arrivals that landed as winds were gusting at 45-50. But soon after that as the wind got stronger and started to shift around the rest of the arrivals diverted. Countless cancellations and we ran out of cots for the pax that had to remain at the airport overnight. Just a big mess today.

I was on the last CVGATL last night; we took a lot of delay while the CS agent rebooked a bunch of PAX. I figured that with my seniority, my chances of getting on the plane were nil, then I heard my last name called in the last bunch of standbys.

I couldnt believe I got on.

Had I have known that ops at CVG were shutdown for a while, I mightve ended up driving from FWA to ATL! My wife says my getting out of CVG last night was divine intervention - who am I to argue...

I know the FAA also evacuated the SDF tower yesterday and the airport was closed during the afternoon until about 4:30PM EDT due to debris on the runway. Also several hangars were damaged at both SDF and LOU (the GA airport) and the UPS Worldport also suffered from some roof damage. Winds gusted to at least 60-70mph and there are numerous trees/power lines down throughout the city with over 300,000 people w/o power (including myself!).